Members of the big bass drum crew perform with the Purdue All-American Marching Band at halftime of a game at Ross-Ade Stadium.

Written by

Dave Bangert

Let me start by saying that in the 25 football seasons I've lived here, I never lost sleep over Purdue University's claims about what once might have been the "World's Largest Drum."

I always figured that was a leftover declaration from its birth in 1921, tenuously ginned up today by lettering on a drumhead that can easily be dismissed by Guinness World Records, which went to China to find a drum more than double the size of the one in West Lafayette. (That doesn't even count collegiate contenders in Texas and Missouri.)